Silent Echoes by Bill Fontana

(click on a bell to hear the sound of it not ringing - heard best on headphones)

“No longer for ears…..soundwhich like a deeper ear,hears us, who only seemto be hearing. Reversal of spaces.Projection of innermost worldsinto the Open…..” Rainer
Maria Rilke

"Vibrating within
the ear are many voices
but their origin
has a source which may be called
the sound of no sound. "- TAKUAN

SILENT ECHOES explores the sounds of five famous Buddhist Temple bells in
Kyoto when they are not ringing. Vibration sensors were attached
to the bells and acoustic microphones were placed inside of their resonant
cavities. They measured and recorded how these bells are in fact ringing all
the time in response to the ambient sounds of the environment. In the context
and psychology of Buddhist culture the idea of a bell ringing all the
time is a powerful metaphor. There is a famous mediation in which one
strikes a bowl shaped bell and if one’s attention is unwavering one experiences
that this bell does not stop ringing as long one is listening.

“…when a bell rings it is only the sound of the bell listening to the sound
of the bell. Or to put it another way it is the sound of yourself ringing.
This is the moment of enlightenment.” (The Three Pillars of Zen by Phillip
Kapleau)

In Silent Echoes, I have used modern measurement technology to reveal a hidden
world of perpetual acoustic energy within an apparently dormant bell. The
bell is always listening and is a physical mediation on the world around
it. These bells are portals to the acoustic energy around them and they
have never been silent. This idea of music being a state of mind tuned
into the music going on all time around us has been a strong interest in
all of my work with live sound sculptures for the past 40 years. These temple bells are
a physical analogy to the idea of music as continuous listening. John
Cage many times said that “music is continuous and listening is intermittent”. In
using the term sound sculpture to describe my work, I had defined sculpture
as a way to make physical some state of the human condition; therefore a
sound sculpture makes the act of listening in a musical way continuous and
physical.

In Silent Echoes besides the high-resolution sound recordings of the bells,
a high definition video camera viewed these bells so that in this video installation
the audience gazes at static, nearly life size projection of the bells while
being immersed in its resonating echoes of the world around it.

Bill Fontana

The production of Silent Echoes was made
possible by the kind
assistance of Christopher Blasdel of the International House
in Tokyo and
Professor Shin Nakagawa in Kyoto.